Made to Measure

In bringing Leonard Slatkin on board as its new music director, the DSO found a harmonious fit: a solid conductor who can also drum up support for the orchestra

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A young Slatkin (right) with younger brother Fred, circa late 1940s.

Photograph courtesy of leonard slatkin

But Slatkin doesn’t want to alienate listeners, either. He’s been known to talk from the podium to elucidate a composition or talk about the composer.

“When I do address the audience, it’s not at all playing down to them, but trying to embrace the audience and bring them into our world.”

Under Slatkin, the DSO’s repertoire is likely to pick up a decidedly American accent. He gravitates to such modern composers as Joan Tower, John Corigliano, and Christopher Rouse. But he also has a soft spot for the easily digestible “bonbons” of Leroy Anderson (1908-1975), the accessible but clever composer of such light works as The Typewriter, Bugler’s Holiday, and The Syncopated Clock.

If there’s been a criticism of Slatkin, it’s that he sometimes overloads himself. He admitted as much to The Washington Post in June, citing a time a few years ago when “I overextended myself … I was doing too much.” While praising Slatkin for improving the NSO, Anne Midgette, The Post’s music critic, volleyed a parting shot at the end of his tenure, writing that the conductor “generally gives the impression of fluency rather than profundity.”

But the slate is wiped clean in Detroit, and Slatkin is intent on making an indelible mark here.

The Making of an Artist

Slatkin’s musical pedigree is about as pure as a Mozart sonata. Born Sept. 1, 1944, in Los Angeles of Russian-Jewish heritage, the young Slatkin was exposed to music daily, and in a wide spectrum of styles. His father, Felix, played the violin in the orchestra first at Warner Bros., then at 20th Century Fox. His mother, Eleanor Aller, was a cellist with Warner Bros. It’s she who’s heard playing the Korngold Cello Concerto in the 1946 film Deception, starring Bette Davis, Claude Rains, and Paul Henreid. His parents were founding members of the Hollywood String Quartet, an ensemble renowned not only for recordings of Beethoven and Shostakovich, but also for accompanying Frank Sinatra on the 1957 album Close to You, as well as other pop albums for Capitol.

The Slatkin household became something of a Parnassus for musicians in L.A., and young Leonard couldn’t help but soak up the inspiration in that hive of creativity.

“Our house became a magnet for all the people involved in music in Los Angeles,” Slatkin says. “This meant that if the quartet was playing a piece by Stravinsky, then Stravinsky came to the house. If [film composers] Max Steiner or Korngold were writing a score at the studio, they came to the house. If my parents were doing an album by Sinatra, he was at the house. Or Nat King Cole. Or Schoenberg. Art Tatum played on our piano. It was unbelievable.”

Of all the musical friendships his parents forged, the one between them and Sinatra was especially warm. Felix served as Sinatra’s concertmaster. “Frank wouldn’t do anything without my parents,” Slatkin says. “He cancelled recording sessions if my dad was ill, and he’d say to the musicians, ‘I’m paying you, but Felix isn’t well. Go home.’ Frank would sometimes take my brother and me upstairs and sing us to sleep.”

Felix died in 1963, when Leonard was just 19. Eleanor outlived her husband by 32 years. Leonard’s younger brother, Fred Zlotkin (he uses the original Russian spelling of the surname), is principal cellist with the New York City Ballet. Leonard studied violin, piano, viola, and cello and went on to learn composition and conducting at Indiana University and the Juilliard School of Music.

Along the way, the 16-year-old Slatkin played a gig as a cocktail pianist in California. On his first night on the job, he took the same request over and over from a man who became increasingly plotzed. He eventually confided to Slatkin that his wife was leaving him.

“I was incredibly naïve about everything in life; I led a very sheltered existence,” Slatkin says. “The man said, ‘My wife left me for another woman.’ I thought she was going to live with her roommate — that’s how naïve I was!” Then, after dropping a $100 bill into the brandy snifter atop the piano, the besotted fellow announced, “I’m going to drive my car into Santa Monica Pier and kill myself.”

An alarmed Slatkin called on the bartender for help, hoping to avert the impending suicide. Inured to the empty threats of lushes, the bartender didn’t bat an eye. But that didn’t mollify Slatkin. “For two weeks after that, every morning at 7, I’d check the paper, looking for a body that had washed up in Santa Monica.”

In addition to being ingenuous, Slatkin says he was preternaturally shy, a trait that seems hard to fathom today from a conductor who’s bathed in the limelight. He says he shed his bashful side after nabbing a job in 1968 as a radio host on KDNA in St. Louis while also serving as assistant conductor with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. 

“The orchestra went on strike, I had nothing to do, and they asked me to do a radio interview,” Slatkin explains. KDNA was known then as an “underground” station with an unstructured format. It soon became apparent to the host that Slatkin could talk as volubly about Janis Joplin, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix as he could about classical music, and he was offered a show.

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